trying to lure me away from the safety of my guards.”
Micah’s fingers itched to go for his guns, but he knew he’d be sentencing both he and David to death if he did. “Your lead intelligence officer, Montoya, was caught trying to send correspondence to the other side; I know he wanted to make sure you didn’t listen to us.”
“You can call Langley and verify who we are and why we’re here-” David began.
“Better yet,” Micah interrupted, “if you’re thinking this is some kind of trick, we’ll take the waiting helicopter. You have plenty of resources at your fingertips, call for your own transportation. Do you have somewhere you can safely wait to find out if we’re telling the truth or not?”
“Of course I do, but I wouldn’t be foolish enough to tell you where it is,” he stated, causing the group of Uzi toting guards to laugh uneasily. The place he bunkered in when trouble arose was not known, and the only reason why he had lasted so long for someone who opposed the drug lords so vehemently.
“Fine,” David said, standing and stepping away from the table, “just don’t ignore the danger posed to your family. We want to see you to continue to succeed. We’ll be at the Habitel Hotel until tomorrow at noon and then we are on a flight to Venezuela.”
Micah stood slowly, “One more thing, when this is over with today, you may want to dig a little deeper into your intelligence people. Montoya wasn’t alone in his efforts to help the other side and-”
The gentleman stood up and offered his hand to Micah, “I appreciate what appears to be an honest effort here to convince me that there is trouble within my organization, but I’m not even convinced that Montoya is guilty.”
Micah accepted the offered hand, gripping it firmly in his right as he clasped the man’s jacketed forearm with his left, allowing his hand to slide and pause. “That’s the problem with a good liar,” Micah stated locking eyes with the man, “he’ll make you want to believe he’s telling the truth. In a few hours you’ll know he’s the leak, but when you find that out, I would be suspicious of anyone loyal to Montoya.”
“That would prove difficult, because that would be about half my staff.”
Micah hesitated, expecting David to shake the hand of the deputy chief, but he was making no effort to make contact. David turned and opened the door and they walked out to the lobby. An attractive Spanish woman who appeared to be in her early thirties rose from the sofa, “Joaquin, what is this about?”
“You must be Mrs. Martinez,” David said, extending his hand to her.
She accepted it cautiously, still looking toward her husband.
David clasped his free hand on her shoulder and slid it back and paused. “Nothing to worry you about, I’m sure your husband has this all under control.”
It was quite clear that Mr. Martinez did not like David to put his hands on her as he came up and took her arm and turned her away from him, speaking Spanish as he did.
Micah didn’t speak more than a few words of Spanish, but David was fluent.
They walked out of the office building and headed for the waiting helicopter. Micah and David boarded as the group watched nervously. The blades came slowly to life, but soon enough they had lifted off and were swooping over the city.
“Did you have any problems getting it off your palm?” Micah asked as they sat in the privacy of the cabin.
“No. I overheard some of the murmurings by the guards that she had arrived and I figured she was a more reliable person to pin it on. How about you?”
“It locked tight on to the sleeve of his jacket.” Micah pulled out a silver brief case and opened it up, removing a piece of electronic equipment. He turned it on and watched the small blips on the screen.
“I’d really like to know how the hell the information about us coming down here leaked to Martinez.” David growled. “It was beginning to feel like we were setup.”
“True, and believe me, I’ll be grilling D’Angelo on how that happened, but, for now, it looks like everything is going according to plan.”
“Jimenez has twenty of his least valuable men going on the attack. When Martinez realizes we were correct, and that Jimenez is gunning for him, I’m sure he’ll take his group into hiding until the guards take care of the insurgence. As soon as we see them on the move, we’ll have him and then we can finish this job and get the hell out of here.”
Within an hour, David and Micah transferred from the helicopter to a Land Cruiser and were following the tracking signals from the devices they slipped onto Martinez and his wife. The attack happened right on schedule as the guards open fire on the inexperienced fighters.
David captured the radio signals as they informed Martinez the attack happened as the American’s predicted. His guard was being mobilized for an air attack. What the fighting forces didn’t know was that Jimenez, with the help of a pair of Americans, had already sabotaged their aircraft and a terrible accident was waiting to befall them.
Martinez, his wife and their two sons, the deputy chief and two other officials were on the move with ten of his closest, heavily armed guards. They were going to the bunker until the battle was over and Jimenez and his men had been taught a lesson, again. Unfortunately, Martinez had no idea that he and his wife were bringing the enemy to their door step.
They followed the signal to a village on the outskirts of Bogota and watched from a distance as the group entered a small and seemingly unfortified home nestled against the hillside. Micah was putting grenades in his flak jacket and grabbing the SAG-30 grenade launcher, ready to move from the vehicle when David stopped him.
“They’re not in there bro,” he said confidently.
“You just tracked them,” Micah began, but looked over at the screen. The green blips were on the move; David was right they weren’t inside the house. The house was against the hill, so there was no rear exit.
They watched with the slightest amount of amazement as the green flashes continued moving at a semi-fast pace to the left of the screen.
“It’s a cave entrance,” Micah stated as he pulled his topographical maps up on his computer, “wow, a big cave system, too. We’ll have to keep tracking and see if they come out at another house or if they’re bunking inside the cave. They must have some type of transport because they’re moving too fast to be on foot.”
“Nothing gas powered I’m sure. Most likely they have an electric golf cart they use to move everyone quickly.” David paused and looked at Micah. “I don’t like spelunking, bro. And, we didn’t bring the right equipment for going into caves.”
“We aren’t giving up. We’ll give them a little longer and then start driving through the village and see if they come out at another house.”
Micah removed the trappings of his jacket and placed it on the floor as they began moving slowly through the town. Several houses were easy to eliminate due to the fact that they didn’t rest against the mountain. The blips continued to move as David and Micah looked for what might be a likely exit from the cave. The road turned to the north as it began a gradual rise up the mountain.
“Wait,” Micah said, “They’re right underneath us. The cave travels under the road and crosses to that…” He was looking up the side of the mountain and could see what appeared to be a large deserted house wedged into the rocks. “I think we just found our bunker.”
David drove cautiously down to a small gully to the east as they loaded their gear on their backs and began the careful trek up to the house, ever vigilant for guards that might be hidden along the way. It was becoming apparent that Martinez had felt this house was so obscure that extra guards were unnecessary-a deadly mistake.
When they reached the building, they split up, David traveling up and over to the opposite side as Micah began looking for weaknesses on his side. He found the perfect place to watch through a small window. Within minutes, a door inside the back of the living room opened and the guards emerged cautiously inspecting the house and then motioning Martinez and his officials and family that it was safe to enter.
Micah could tell they were confident in the security of their hideaway as they relaxed and began to move about the house. He felt the soft vibration in his pocket as David signaled he was in place and ready for the invasion whenever Micah signaled back he was ready to attack. He had two options; pull his scoped pistol and take off Martinez’s head and be satisfied with making the original target, or use the impact grenade in the launcher and aim for the roof support to the cave opening, effectively collapsing the exit and then cutting down everyone inside. One signal to David would mean making one target. Two signals would mean David should be ready to move inside the house right after the explosion.
Micah didn’t respond immediately as he watched Martinez’s wife and two young sons move closer to where he
